The present invention relates to the field of charge-card billing statements. Examples of charge-cards include credit cards, debit cards, bank cards, ATM cards, store cards, gas cards, etc. More particularly, this invention relates to the visual presentation of the conducted transactions over a certain period of time by maps to summarize the card transactions in locations, amount, category and time, in addition to the conventional transaction list in a billing statement. The more intuitive presentation of transactions in maps allows the cardholder to identify sensitive or alerting charges more readily. An example of the sensitive charge can be a transaction at the point-of-charge out of the local area or a transaction with a significant charge amount.
Billing statements for charge-cards report the transactions the cardholder conducted with a list of transaction date, merchant name (store name), category of merchant, point-of-charge (merchant address), and charged amount. With the increasing use of charge-cards, and a large number of people possessing multiple charge-cards (such as credit cards, bank cards, department store cards, . . . ), the tabular billing statements often make it difficult for cardholders to check the detailed transactions, which is especially true for multi-page billing statements.
Geographical Information Systems (GIS) in general, and Geo-coding tools in particular, are information systems which can be used to geo-reference cardholder, transactions, or merchant address information by comparing the available address information to a street network. Through such process, geographic coordinates (x, y) can be added to the address information. The process of adding geographic coordinates (x, y) is called geo-coding. With geo-coded address data, the spatially aware charge-card transaction system can manage the transaction information in both relational and spatial dimensions. This spatially aware transaction system can now be used for analyzing, organizing, and displaying the spatial information in addition to its traditional uses.
The method and system presented herein integrates geo-referencing technology with a charge-card billing system. The geo-coded cardholder, transaction, and merchant addresses are stored, managed and analyzed. The transactions are categorized into local-area transactions, none-local-area transactions, sensitive transactions and ordinary ones. The sensitive transactions are the ones with significant amount of charges, or the point-of-charge is not in the assumed local-area. The GIS produces a set of transaction maps, which could display the point-of-charges and summarized transactions, thus, improving the quality of service for cardholders as they review their charge-card billing statement. This visual representation of transactions will aid cardholders to identify fraudulent charges more easily. Ultimately, it will benefit the card issuer in consumer purchasing studies and customer relationship management.
A GIS tool usually provides maps with very rich colors and symbols in displaying the locations of assets or activities. However, now most of the charge-card billing statements are printed in black and white. In order to show all kinds of transactions in a transaction map only with black and white, the special considerations are needed in the map presentations.
We have not seen any publication or patent relating charge-card transaction maps to billing statements.